From
TIME:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may regulate foods and drugs relatively well—with some exceptions—but the agency can't require cosmetics companies to conduct safety assessments, control the labeling of products or force product recalls. Just a fifth of the chemicals in cosmetics have actually been assessed by the FDA's safety panel.
And the chemicals inside many cosmetics—shampoos, moiturizers, lipstick and more—are worth worrying about. Carcinogens like formaldehyde, neurotoxins like lead,
endocrine disrupters like phthalates—they're often found, even in just trace amounts, in cosmetics and personal care items. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune in May found that some skin-whitening creams had dangerous levels of mercury, enough to cause kidney damage. Annie Leonard—the author of the book The Story of Stuff and its accompanying film—has made a short web video (The Story of Cosmetics) that tells the tale.
As Leonard points out, real change needs to come not just from the consumer, or even industry, but in the laws that govern cosmetic and chemical regulation. And there's some positive news from Washington: today Representatives Jan Schakowsky, Ed Markey and Tammy Baldwin introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010. The legislation aims to phase out cosmetic ingredients linked to cancer and developmental harm, improve protection for children and other vulnerable populations and close labeling loopholes that allow companies to classify any number of chemicals under innocuous terms like "fragrances."
Passing the bill won't easy—the Personal Care Products Council, a trade group for the industry, argues that the legislation would place impossible burdens on the FDA, and that it's "not based on credible and established scientific principles." But at the very least the industry does seem to recognize that it has a problem, and is open to strengthening regulation at the FDA level, which is a start.